Clio the Romantic Muse: Historicizing the Faculties in Germany

by Theodore Ziolkowski

"It is not sufficiently appreciated, I believe, how profoundly Clio, the muse of history, permeated every aspect of thought during the Romantic philosophy, theology, law, natural science, medicine, and all other fields of intellectual endeavor.... Thoughtful students of the period well understand that 'Romanticism' is not merely a literary or aesthetic movement but, rather, a general climate of opinion."―from the Introduction In a book certain to be of interest to readers in many disciplines, the distinguished scholar Theodore Ziolkowski shows how a strong impulse toward historical concerns was formalized in the four German academic philosophy, theology, law, and medicine/biology. In Clio the Romantic Muse , he focuses on representative figures in whose early work the sense of history was first G. W. F. Hegel, Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Friedrich Karl von Savigny, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, and Friedrich Schleiermacher. Through biographical treatments of these and other leading German scholars, Ziolkowski traces how the disciplines became historicized in the period 1790–1810. He goes on to suggest how powerfully the Romantic thinkers influenced their disciples in the twentieth century.

Genres: History

240 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2004